The Price of Sins
by adreamstate
Summary: A one-shot from Catelyn's POV on Jon Snow, Ned Stark and Ashara Dayne. R L J & N A OC. Companion to one of my bigger fanfictions in which Ashara and her stillborn daughter survive.


_**Emma Rush**_

 **The Price of Sins**

She can still remember the day her husband arrived in Winterfell with the stranger's children in his arms. She had hated them at first sight; it was a stain on her honour. And yet her husband forced her to let them share her son's nursery. Her _trueborn_ son's nursery. The girl was older than her son, but the boy was not. Whoever their mother was, her husband went _back_ to the woman. Perhaps, if it had just been the girl, it wouldn't be so hard, as she was conceived before their marriage - she tries to convince herself. But she knows it isn't true. The boy was all Stark, far more than her auburn-haired Robb, which was painful enough. But then there was the girl, who shared the same deep inky locks as her brother, but with _haunting_ eyes of the woman her husband loved; a deep violet with specks of grey, always wide-eyed. Maybe that's why her husband loved the girl more than his sons, or so it seemed.

As the children began to grow, they only grew closer. Their giggles echoed down the passages of the castle as they played chase and the sound of wooden play-swords whacking each other in the sparring yard became a daily occurrence. With the arrival of her daughter Sansa, another auburn-haired Tully child, her time became split between the newborn and separating the bastards from Robb. She prevented the bastards from seeing Sansa, but she knew it couldn't last. Her husband loved his children more than hers.

So when the bastards got sick with fever, she prayed for their death. _Let them die_.

But the gods didn't listen.

Years later, when her husband left to fight the Greyjoy rebellion, she dreaded the thought of him returning with another child that wasn't hers. He had yet to meet their newborn Arya, and the fear of that history may repeat itself was rooted deep in her heart. At least she was finally able to have some control over the bastards, and so she separated them from Robb far more than her husband ever allowed. Jon was no longer able to attend Robb's lessons, and the girl was forced to spend her days practising needle-work with the Septa. But despite her efforts, Jon was still better than Robb, both with Maester Luwin in the library and Ser Rodrick in the sparring yard.

As the children grew, the bastards became more and more threatening, even with the arrival of her second son, Brandon. The boy, despite her efforts, was better than her son at everything - even if he was prevented from showing it off. The girl grew to be the perfect lady. Her stitches were excellent, she held all the grace of a lady, and she sang with a hauntingly beautiful voice. She was even named the 'Beauty of the North', over her own _trueborn_ beauty Sansa. Despite being unable to sway Robb away from the bastards, she was able to use Sansa's naivety to her advantage. As the bastard grew more beautiful and talented than her own daughter - although she would never admit it - she encouraged a fit of jealousy in her daughter that quickly diminished what little relationship the sister's had. Unfortunately, her daughter Arya didn't follow in Sansa's footsteps and often teased Sansa for not being as perfect as the bastard in retaliation to Sansa's nasty words about her appearance.

When the King came to visit, she demanded they were hidden away in the crowd, forced out of sight as not to disrespect the royal family. At the presentation, the King went along her line of children, complimenting them all, even making Sansa blush when he called her pretty. But then he spotted them in the crowd. Yes, she had the 'pretty' daughter; but not the 'utterly beautiful' daughter who 'reminded him of Lyanna'. He even joked that Jon was more Stark than her husband himself. She seethed at the disrespect but hid it well; until the day Bran fell. Her _favourite_ child. When the bastards came to say their farewells, leaving to travel across the Narrow Sea, her blood ran so cold it turned to ice.

"It should have been you."

So here she stood, looking out upon her son's army camped around her childhood home Riverrun, ready to take on the mighty Tywin Lannister while the squids stole the North from under their feet. She hadn't seen or heard of the bastards in years. Her husband was dead, her daughters held prisoner, her eldest a King for all the wrong reasons, and she had now heard the news that her youngest sons were dead; her precious Bran and Rickon. She wondered if Elia Martell would've felt the same, had she lived. Their little babes were all butchered for a crown. And both of their husbands loved another woman. Perhaps it was a crime for her sins, she thought, for it rather poetic that the bastard girl shared the name of the fallen Dornish Princess. That fact alone revealed the truth she wanted to deny with all her heart, but she knew deep down it was the truth.

Ned never spoke of their mother, not so much as a word, but a castle has no secrets, and she heard her maids repeating the tales they heard from the lips of her husband's soldiers. They whispered of Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning, deadliest of the seven knights of Aerys' Kingsguard, and of how their young lord had slain him in single combat. And they told her how afterwards Ned had carried Ser Arthur's sword back to the beautiful young sister who awaited him in a castle called Starfall on the shores of the Summer Sea in Dorne. The Lady Ashara Dayne, tall and fair, with haunting violet eyes - no doubt the same eyes as the bastards. She was Princess Elia's first handmaiden and closest friend. It had taken her a fortnight to marshal her courage, but finally, in bed one night, she had asked her husband the truth of it, asked him to his face.

That was the only time in all their years that Ned had ever frightened her.

"Never ask me about them," he said, cold as ice. "They are my blood, and that is all you need to know. And now I will learn where you heard that name, my lady,"

She had pledged to obey; she told him; and from that day on, the whispering had stopped, and Ashara Dayne's name was never heard in Winterfell again.


End file.
